Fire
by LoveFromShinola
Summary: Miss Havisham contemplates as fire engulfs her from all sides. Mostly based on the 2011 BBC mini-series.


**Author's Note:**

**Hello :) So, seeing as I promised BlueBelleK a Miss Havisham fic, I thought I'd best get this one out before exam season sets in. So, BlueBelleK, I dedicate this, however shitty it may be, to you. Also, BlueBelleK, I noticed you liked Bleak House – maybe I could put together something more? After all the CD fandom is extremely under-populated. Enjoy x**

**DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN GREAT EXPECTATIONS**

It is painless, this being on fire. Her troubles, her worries, perhaps her insanity – all of it is burned away inch by inch. In the flames she is careless, lost to a world that she knows she will soon leave forever. She vaguely realises, somewhere in the black oblivion, that something has been wrapped about her. Someone is trying to douse the flames. She knows that it does not matter. She will be dead before they succeed; whoever they are. She has no thought for this cruel world any longer. Estella has left her. The only being she might have professed to love has left her, and now the flames give her a peace she sorely craves.

It is true what they say, she wonders fleetingly. Your life does flash before your eyes. She sees many images of people she once knew. People she interacted with, before she knew the world was nothing but a heartless place - and to survive, she must be heartless too.

She is taken from being a girl to a woman to whatever she is now so fast she thinks she might be dizzy, if her empty body were still capable of such a feeling.

Papa adored her. She was the apple of his eye and even now she thinks on him as an exception to the rule of men – Papa would never hurt her, not truly. The one time he had, it had been to conceive her brother; if she could call him brother at all. Arthur Havisham, beget by her father with the cook of all people. He was a nuisance, and Papa thought so too, much to her younger self's delight.

It was not until many years later, after she shut herself away, that she understood the extent of her bastard brother's betrayal. He had worked with _him _to swindle her. Papa had left him out of his will, quite rightly. Arthur's actions only served to strengthen her resolve – men were indeed a lesser species of being. Savage in their desires and utterly ruthless in their procurement, whatever the cost to anyone. Whatever the cost to _her_.

For the first time in ever so long she allowed herself to remember, in detail, that dreadful day in June 1791. Dates were not something she cared for, nor times. Not at all. That one, however, was engrained on her mind so sharply she knew she would never forget it – no doubt not even in this new realm the flames were leading her to…she hoped there would not be flames there as well.

_June 14__th__ 1791 – Satis House_

'_Only the other shoe to go on now, Miss,' said Hannah, kneeling at her feet in a clean outfit, all done up for the occasion._

_A cough came from the doorway._

'_A letter for you, Miss.'_

_A hand stretched forward to meet the servant._

_A hand ripped the note open._

_A hand flew to a mouth in shock._

_A hand let loose the paper, not watching as it fluttered to the ground._

_A hand supported a fragile body, as she sank to her dresser chair, blindly._

_A hand touched her shoulder:_

'_Miss? What is it, Miss?'_

_A hand did not wipe away the tear that trailed down her cheek._

_The last tear she would ever cry for the sake of that man._

Even now, years on, the feeling of abandonment, the feeling of absolute despair and agony, the tearing at heart, did not leave her be. She was but a shell now, and even so the pain did not cease to think of that time. The seconds between youthful joy and age old woe stretched out and crushed together. They went slow and then fast and she could never quite remember how she'd felt that first time. Except that she'd never recovered.

To at last burn that note was a sign of endings and, hopefully, though she had never believed it before, of a new beginning. A beginning where she could live in innocence again, untainted and open to the experience of love.

The pain was still there, but it dimmed for the first time. For the first time it began to fade and the faces of the old time melted away. There was no Arthur, no _him_, not even a Pip or an Estella. Even dear Papa didn't intrude on her now. She saw that light they speak of, the light that leads to a happier, better place and she strode towards it, somehow, while her body lay damaged on the ground.

She left behind the old and embraced an unknown new. After all, whatever could be worse than the life she had endured?

A hand reached into the light and Estella Havisham Sr. was no more.

_I have hurt you._

_I wanted to hurt you._

_I wanted to hurt everybody._

_You forgive me?_

Forgive me.

**AN:**

**Hope you liked it x**


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